


Matched Sets

by AnonymousCapybara



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24395926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousCapybara/pseuds/AnonymousCapybara
Summary: The Weasleys always seemed to come in sets. Bill and Charlie. Fred and George. Ron and Ginny. So where did that leave Percy?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	Matched Sets

Like it or not, the Weasley children came in sets.

Bill always had Charlie. They were the eldest, they were only two years apart, and they were very similar. Bill could not truly remember a time when he existed and Charlie did not. 

By the time the third Weasley boy came along, Bill was nearly six and Charlie nearly four, and they really didn’t have time for the screaming, pink-faced baby who kept their mum and dad so endlessly busy. Sure, Bill would sometimes help out Mum by watching him, and Charlie would occasionally poke and prod at the baby – Percy – but he just did not seem to belong to the brothers in the same way they belonged to each other.

But that was okay, Bill reasoned. Because before too long, Mum was pregnant again. Percy would have a pair, and they would be even closer in age than he was to Charlie. Percy would be fine.

And so Bill and Charlie ran in the yard and played dragons and cursebreakers and got into all kinds of mischief without worrying about their little brother. He would soon get his own partner in crime.

This time, however, Mum managed to have twins. Two identical, loud, time-consuming babies. Fred and George. Always Fred and George.

Percy had not been old enough when the twins were born – only one year and seven months, their poor Mum – to have any solid memories of his life as the youngest Weasley. So, from the beginning of his consciousness, he was thrust into life as the middle child, the obvious outlier.

There were moments when he tried to tag along with Bill and Charlie, sure, but the older boys loved to play games so full of action and adventure and violence and why did they never want to play Ministry with him and help him do paperwork like Dad did every day at work?

Before it even seemed possible, Dad told them Mum was going to have another baby, running his hand a bit exhaustedly through his hair as he said it. 

The twins were almost two and were somehow able to cause more chaos and mayhem than should have been possible for someone twice their combined age. Three-and-a-half-year-old Percy saw the way their father’s forehead wrinkled and heard the exasperation in their mother’s voice as she asked him to, “Please, mind the twins.” 

He wondered why she never told him to play with them, the way Bill and Charlie played together.

The new baby, Ron, fascinated Percy. He liked to study the baby’s long nose and blue eyes. Ron watched him, too. Sometimes, Ron was a bit loud for Percy. But that was okay, he figured he would grow out of it. 

Bill had Charlie, and Fred and George were clearly a pair. Percy felt a bit left out, but that was okay now that Ron was his.  
Percy might have only been four, but he wasn’t stupid. One night, when he was sitting and watching Ron sleep, as he was wont to do (it was the only quiet place in the whole house, and Percy craved quiet places), he heard his Mum and Dad talking quietly in their room. Only Mum wasn’t just talking, she was sniffing like she was crying?

They wanted a girl. Percy knew his numbers and he knew that six was even and that meant everyone had a pair. Bill and Charlie, Fred and George, Percy and Ron. But another baby? Percy could add, and that would make seven. And seven was odd. Someone would be left out.

And so it was.

He was only four when Ginny was born (almost five!), and his mother was over the moon. The warmth in her voice when she told the boys to, “Come meet your sister, Ginevra,” for the first time made it feel like it was Christmas. But Percy felt dread in the pit of his stomach.

The older boys padded quietly into the room, Percy carrying Ron on his hip and Bill and Charlie doing their best to hush the twins. The moment baby Ron stretched out from his older brother’s arms, babbling wildly at the tiny little bundle in their Dad’s arms, Percy knew that he had lost him.

Ron was immediately fascinated by his sister, in the way that babies are with each other. He poked and prodded her, but they giggled together and played together in a way Percy never had with a sibling. And all of the adults were enthralled.

“How wonderful!” and “They’ll only be a year apart at Hogwarts!” and “It’s almost like another set of twins!”

As irrational as it was, Percy almost wished that his parents would have one more child. Just one more, so it would be even. He liked things to be even. Bill and Charlie. Fred and George. Ron and Ginny. And, oh yeah, forgot about Percy.

There were two years when Bill was off at Hogwarts and Charlie was too young to go and the number at home was even. Charlie had always been a wild child, gallivanting in the mud and getting into wild games in the garden with Bill. Once Bill left, Percy quietly tried to follow his older brother, but Charlie would just scowl at him and then complain at dinner that he couldn’t wait to be at Hogwarts with Bill.

And so it continued.

Percy finally turned eleven and was old enough to join his older brothers at Hogwarts, wearing their hand-me-down robes, using their hand-me-down books, and carrying his rather worn looking pet rat. The professors all gushed over him, wanting him to be as charming as Bill or as fiery as Charlie. He got great marks in classes, but then, so had his brothers. He was never the first Weasley to do anything, he was always just the one trying to keep up and stay out of the shadows. 

His teachers were always comparing him to Bill and Charlie. It got even worse two years later when the twins arrived. Sure, the Professors were happy to tell him that he was much better behaved than Fred and George, but it was just another reminder that he was just Percy, the only Weasley who didn’t fit in a set.

Percy threw himself into his schoolwork. If he couldn’t be the first, and couldn’t be part of a set, then he would make himself stand out.

By the time Ron and Ginny had arrived in school and the older set had left, Percy was a Prefect and nearly top of all of his classes and no, he didn’t have as much fun as the twins but at least he would be able to get a respectable Ministry job like their Dad one day. 

As much as he hated to admit it, he was envious of his siblings. When things happened, as they always seemed to every year at Hogwarts, his siblings had someone to lean on. And he would be the one to write a letter to Mum and Dad, explaining the chaos. He wasn’t ever involved; he wasn’t ever invited to be.

He graduated and got his quiet, respectable Ministry job. The twins and Ron and Ginny never wrote him. He hardly heard from Bill and Charlie, either, but with the way they carried on when they saw each other, Percy knew they wrote each other. Probably met up on occasion, too. Just as well, he was fine on his own.

Percy really hammered in how fine he was on his own when he estranged himself from his family after Harry Potter made his ridiculous claims. And honestly, if his family wanted Harry Potter’s opinion more than his own, he didn’t want to be involved with them anyway.

He tried to tell Ron that, in a letter. That he should back off from Harry. Ron, who had once, for a brief moment, been his brother. But that didn’t work either. Percy, however, was fine alone. He always had been anyway.

He kept up with the twins from afar, as they broke out of school and opened their bizarre joke shop, of all things. But Percy had to admit, as much as it pained him (he wondered at times if he resented them) that the twins were bloody brilliant. He’d seen some of their inventions and the magic involved was truly spectacular.

He visited his family once, rather reluctantly, and there was no denying the joy on his mum’s face at his appearance. But there was also no denying the vehement hatred on the faces of the youngest four, and they flung food at him as he made his leave. It was all well and good, he wasn’t welcome, anyway.

Things got worse and there was no denying the war anymore and Percy was a bit eaten up with guilt, finding himself not exactly on the wrong side of it (he was clearly no Death Eater) but also staunchly not on the right side, either. He had missed their Dad nearly being killed by a snake and Ron nearly dying of poison and then, probably most unforgivably, Bill’s wedding and there really was, he figured, no turning things around with his family at this point.

He knew what the right thing to do was, of course. Percy had always prided himself on knowing the right thing to do. And when the opportunity came, he took it. 

He recklessly threw himself back into the family where he didn’t fit.

He came bearing apologies and regret and remorse and honestly, humiliation, and Fred – Fred – one of the twins with whom he had never, ever fit; Fred who had been so vocal about his hatred; Fred who had thrown food at him as he fled; welcomed him into the fold with open arms.

When all was said and done, Percy couldn’t stand it. His brothers had been a set. Fred and George. Percy could hardly ever recall hearing one called without the other and he had been so, so unfairly bitter about that. But now Fred was gone and there was just George and it was so wrong that Percy wanted to fling himself off of the Astronomy Tower.

It wasn’t the same – nothing could ever be the same, and he could never put himself in George’s shoes. But he had always been just Percy in a family of sets. 

And now George was just George, and Percy, who couldn’t have been more different from his brother despite being only a year and a half older, put his arm around his younger brother’s hunched, shaking shoulders and inwardly swore that he would always be there for George.

He could never replace Fred, of course. No one could. No one would dare to try. But there was still time for them to be George and Percy, and Percy was not going to let his brother be alone.


End file.
